Born 100 BCE into a patrician family claiming descent from the gods and kings.
Through family influence and his many campaigns he rose through the ranks.

At age 20 Julius was sent to Bithynia where he became the young lover of the
King Nicomedes.

"He served his first campaign in Asia on the personal staff of Marcus Thermus,
governor of the province. On being sent by Thermus to Bithynia, to fetch a
fleet, he dawdled so long at the court of Nicomedes that he was suspected of
improper relations with the king . . ." Suetonius, De Vita Caesarum, Divus
Iulius

Otho69-? Domitian81-96Nerva 96-98 Trajan98-117
Hadrian 117-138

These Emperors had taken male lovers.

Edward
Gibbon who wrote 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' observed that all but
one of the first 14 Roman emperors were either bisexual or exclusively
homosexual.

Although I have never completely read this
book, the title contains the entire epithet of the Roman Empire. Why do
you suppose this Empire fell? Is this significant for our time? Or
is this just another civilization of a bygone era? Observe:

The beast that you saw was, and is not;
and is about to come up out of the abyss, and to go into perdition. And they
that dwell on the earth shall wonder, they whose name has not been written in
the book of life from the foundation of the world, when they behold the beast,
how that he was, and is not, and shall come. Here is the mind that has wisdom.
The seven heads are seven mountains, on which the woman sits: and they are seven
kings; the five are fallen, the one is, the other is not yet come; and when he
comes, he must continue a little while. And the beast that was, and is not, is
himself also an eighth, and is of the seven; and he goes into perdition.
Revelation 17:8-11

Do you believe in a resurrected Roman Empire?
Does the beast (government) bear similarities to the previous Roman Empire?
The beast system has been forming for quite some time, and the earth's
inhabitants are oblivious to it! Let's see if the Roman Pattern can be
applied to anything we now know!

Homosexuality in Ancient Rome

Compiled by Nathaniel Wandering

A) Rome political system over the centuries
went from a Monarchy to a Republic, and finally to an Empire

B) It was an agrarian society (before the empire) on the Tiber river

C) History of Roman Politics is really a history of Oligarchy (Property
qualifications).

D) Rough consensus held the state together - even in imperial times, but
especially during the Republic.

E) Roman citizenship

1) Right to appeal local rulings to the magistrates

2) Death penalty was rare

3) Participation in political life

4) Comparatively open citizenship (manumission was far easier in Rome than in
Greek city states), social war, Italian citizenship, even non-Romans in the
colonies were allowed to become citizens

F) It was the first federal state

G) The Census

1) Every five years

2) Counted all citizens

3) Ranked their status (wealth) and this affected military/political placement

5) The moral census (Cicero tells us): censor would submit a citizen to a moral
and physical examination because "a bad man cannot be a good citizen." The
higher the man's standing, the higher expectations of his moral stature

6) Censors could impose fines as punishment

H) Almost all citizens were soldiers for Rome

I) Loot brought back from war helped inspire allegiance and maintain consensus
for state rule

J) Devastation in times like Punic wars reveals that the commitment to the state
ran deeper than financial allegiance - deep nationalism

a) Private space was invaded by censors (unlike the Greek home that was strictly
the sphere of the individual head of the household and not subject to outside
law).

· The censors tried to prevent cruelty to slaves

· They also tried to prevent seduction of boys and other behavior not approved
of by the censors or the law.

b) Many groups lived under one roof, one household:

· Husband, wife, children, servants

· Nutrix - wet nurse

· Nutritor - male educator

· Pedagogue - older child's educator who was there to provide moral growth,
protection. Sex possibly went on between the two, like in the tradition of Greek
educators, although unlike the Greeks it would be kept a secret

c) War displacement

· Children often moved from home to home because of war. This was a fact of life
in Rome.

d) Divorce:

· It was a legal and a practical reality in Rome (unlike Greece where it may be
legal in some rare circumstances but it was virtually impossible to attain in
reality)

e) Client/Patron relationships - common types of social relationships in Rome:

· Patron: Wealthy individual who would extend kindness to clients such as basket
of food left on doorstep

· Patron's primary kindness - legal assistance

· Client: lends political support (votes for patron) and helps to finance the
patron's dowry for his daughters (the patron collects donations)

· Patron/client relationships were often long term

· A patron could be the client to someone even more powerful The household and
realm of relationship involved far broader social networks and a more ambiguous
family than the ones that existed in Greece. The family was a hybrid of
different arrangements, not the stable, autonomous cell of Greece. These
extended family relationships continue in Italy today (Mafia, family business,
etc.)

Marriage:

1) Purpose was to produce legitimate children

2) Roman marriage originally resembled Greek marriage but over time developed
into more of a partnership (again, quite unlike the absolute hierarchy of Greek
relationships)

3) Household law: Patria Potestas - Father/husband (Paterfamilias) has legal
power over the household - including the wife. No one in the household
technically owns property except for him. (except for possible exception of
dowry)

5) Old fashioned Roman marriage law - Marriage cum mano: all of the husband's
and wife's possessions are in fact the husband's possession legally

6) Filaefamilias: This is sometimes referred to as marriage sin mano - This
later form of legal marriage was fairer to women and gave them more power within
the marriage. Wives would legally still be under the care of their fathers after
they married and could reclaim their dowry if they divorced their husband. It
was a kind of legal protection for wives to be able to have some rights to their
property (although they still depended upon their fathers for the legal right to
claim their dowry, revealing that the system was still dominated by men, but
with more power for women than in ancient Greece).

7) Consent: One of the positive Roman innovations for marriage. For a marriage
to be considered legally legitimate, both partners had to consent to it (unlike
in Greece).

8) Consent of the Paterfamilias was also required, so a father could prevent
marriage from occurring, but could not force one upon a daughter (in theory -
certainly daughters could be pressured into marriage but the law said that if
they refused to marry then no father could force them to).

9) Concubines: allowed for men

10) Prostitution: allowed for men (even married men)

11) Adultery: considered adultery for men only if it involved another man's wife

12) Adultery for women: any sex with another man once the woman is married. (But
with other women? The books do not say)

Sources for these notes:

1) David Greenberg, The Construction of Homosexuality

2) Thomas Laqueur, Making Sex - Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud

3) Michael Feher (ed.), The Zone 1 & 2 - Fragments for a History of the Human
Body

4) William Stewart, Cassell's Queer Companion

5) Claude Nicolet, The World of the Citizen in Republican Rome

6) Susan Treggiari, Roman Marriage

7) Keith Bradley, Discovering the Roman Family

8) Amy Richlin, The Gardens of Priapus

9) Petronius, The Satyricon

10) Peter Brown, The Body and Society

11) John Boswell, Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality

12) John Boswell, Same Sex Unions in Modern Europe

Now tell me! Does any of this ring
familiar? Could this be applied to the United States of America today?
Could this also be applied to many of the European Countries? Yes!
Shockingly, it can mirror the societies in Europe and America.

What caused the fall of the Roman Empire?
Rome fell from within! It decayed from the degeneracy practiced, with
knowledge and approval of its' leadership.

For our wrestling is
not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers,
against the world-rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual hosts of
wickedness in the heavenly places.Ephesians 6:12